


un espoir différé (hope deferred)

by soracia



Category: Les Misérables (2012), Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Depression, Enjolras/Grantaire-centric, Fluff and Angst, Grantaire Angst, M/M, Once Upon a Dream, Pining Grantaire, Prophetic Dreams, Soul Bond, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-08-28
Updated: 2014-10-01
Packaged: 2018-02-15 03:07:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,108
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2213457
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/soracia/pseuds/soracia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><b>[</b><i>estel hampa háya va mo carë i órë hlaiwa</i><b>]</b> ~ Grantaire's been dreaming all his life of a man with golden hair and brilliant eyes and a soul that lights him on fire, someone he'd do anything for if only he knew how, but he doesn't expect to ever meet him in real life. Dreams don't work that way, do they? [modern au]</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Grantaire

**Author's Note:**

  * For [maharlika](https://archiveofourown.org/users/maharlika/gifts).



> I know, it's another wip, but I made my lovely [flutterings](http://archiveofourown.org/users/flutterings) cry again so this is what she requested to make up for it. ♥
> 
> Non-reincarnation modern au, sort-of soulbond type thing, Grantaire knows Enjolras when he meets him because he's been dreaming about him all his life. Prior to that, though, it's just making him crazy. Warnings for Grantaire angst and depression, unhealthy coping mechanisms including drinking and who knows what else. Also plenty of fluff, if that needs a warning.

The dream is always the same, and that is what is so terrible about it. If it was different just once, if he could change anything...if he even knew why he keeps dreaming it, over and over. 

But he can never change it, and it always keeps coming back, and he doesn't know _why_.

===

_'Come!' the voice said, resonant and thrilling, 'come join me, come!' and Grantaire tried desperately to follow as the beautiful figure began to disappear into the distance. But his dreamself was too slow, it felt like moving through molasses, a painful amount of effort for only incremental progress, and the owner of the voice quickly vanished far ahead._

_He had no idea what this meant, why he couldn't follow as the voice had asked him to, what he needed to do, where he was supposed to be coming **to** , and when he woke up feeling restless, vaguely unsatisfied and a little heartbroken (again), he wished that just once, he knew. _

_He was pretty sure he would follow that voice, those eyes, that magnificent soul only barely contained in human form, anywhere to anything. If only he knew how._

===

The clock read an unhelpful 3:42 am in bright green numerals, glowing in the dark, and Grantaire sighed, half a groan as he rolled over onto his back and rubbed his face with his hands. Great, just great. He already knew he wouldn't be getting any more sleep tonight, and probably wouldn't get much done in the coming day, either.

The dream always threw him for a while, jolted him out of the everyday and forced him to confront this other, intangible but intense reality that had been bleeding into his life for as long as he could remember, though its effects had grown more acute over the years. Now it left him feeling both buzzed and drained; wired, strung out and agitated but exhausted and trembling with crazy emotions that he couldn't explain without sounding completely insane. 

Sighing again, he got up, pushing aside the covers and rolling out of bed, pulling on a warm hoodie over the t-shirt and sweats he slept in as he headed for the tiny kitchen area in his small, open plan apartment. No matter what the weather, Grantaire always felt cold waking up from this dream, and he was too tense, too keyed up to stay in bed; he needed to move. 

First he made coffee, for the warmth and because it tended to cut through the lingering haze of the dreamworld. It would clear his head a bit, bringing him fully awake so he could begin the process of working through the crazy and making the (ever-increasing) effort of pulling himself together, back into a state that sort of resembled normal. 

Grantaire carefully avoided thinking about anything at all as he waited for the coffee to finish brewing. He simply stood there watching it, shifting from foot to foot with his arms wrapped around his middle, shoulders hunched and hugging himself against the cold and the trembling and the sharp ache of grief and failure and loss that always, now, accompanied the dream in its aftermath. 

The dream hurt, every time, but it hurt more now than it had used to, the layers and layers of pain building up so the emotional reaction was just a little more intense every time he woke from it. Every time digging the wound a little deeper, and it came more often now than it had longer ago. He no longer had the luxury of healing in between, hadn't for several years now. 

When the coffee was finally done - only a few minutes, but it felt like forever - Grantaire gratefully poured a cup and cradled the mug in his cold hands, for a minute just focusing on the way the heat soaked into his palms and slowly rolled up his arms, letting the hot liquid cool a bit before taking a sip. He sighed in relief as the warmth slid down his throat, heating him from the inside as well. That was, yeah, a little better. 

He stood there holding the hot mug, swaying a little and thinking of nothing for the few minutes that it took him to drink the rest of it down, and by the time he was done he was feeling a little more steady, less like he was falling apart at the seams. 

Grantaire refilled his mug then, and debated just taking the pot of coffee with him since it wouldn't take long to finish the cup he had, but in the end he left it on the machine's warming plate so it would stay hot and headed over to sit on his old, battered but incredibly comfortable couch. He curled up in the corner of it where all the pillows were stacked with a grateful sigh, and finally relaxed a little into the cushiony embrace, rolling his neck to relieve some of the tension there and taking another drink of his coffee. 

Used to be he only had the dream occasionally, a couple times a year since he'd been twelve or maybe thirteen, but over the years it had gradually come more and more often. Recently it was two or three times a week, every few days. It was killing him, or so Joly had direly predicted when he'd learned how little actual sleep Grantaire was getting (the dark circles under his eyes gave him away, even though he'd broken down and started using concealer on them). It was definitely making it harder and harder to keep his shit together and manage to get things done in his normal, everyday reality. 

At any rate, it was fucking with his life, insofar as he had one, and this was bad timing. It was nearing the end of semester at school and he had things he was supposed to be working on that were worth a large percentage of his grade, but with half his days being in the wake of a dream night he often just couldn't focus. Grantaire wondered despairingly if he would end up having to drop out, or just fail his classes. He'd managed the first couple of years alright (sort of; his professors liked his work and had cut him some slack), but this shit was getting worse and he wasn't sure he was going to make it to the end. 

His parents might actually murder him then; they already hated the fact that he was an art major in the first place, wasting his life with their money and then actually failing at it might do the trick, but maybe if they did at least he'd get to meet his blond angel. Maybe that was it, where he was being asked to come. Maybe he was supposed to die. He didn't really think so, the dream felt too vibrant and alive for that, but it made more sense than anything else he'd come up with.

Scowling at himself, Grantaire drank half his coffee in one gulp and let the heat of it warm him a little more, praying that the caffeine kicked in and cleared his mind a little more before he got too morbid and depressed. The problem with the dream was that it always left him feeling so hopeless, and hopelessly useless, like there was something he needed desperately to do or be and yet somehow he kept failing at it, over and over. 

Years and years of this had combined to give him a rather cynical, pessimistic view of both life and himself - depression, anxiety, and despair were old friends. But so was the helpless soaring of aching wonder and yearning and something like love that filled his soul in the dream, and lingered for hours or days afterward. 

Always the same dream - or nearly so if not exactly, small variations that meant nothing so far as he could tell - and from the very beginning, even as a teenager it had always stuck with him, impressing him with a visceral sense of longing, of loss, a hunger of need for something he didn't understand, didn't have words for, and a knifelike ache of impossible beauty, fierce and radiant and utterly unworldly. 

It had always been a little vague, the images and impressions left once he woke, but nevertheless something Grantaire had tried repeatedly in the past to recapture in his art. He'd always failed, but then the dream seemed to be getting clearer and more vivid even as it became more frequent. It might be different now.

He hoped it wasn't working up to being every single night, because he really didn't think he could handle that. It was already making him crazy as it was. Desperate. He _wanted_ to follow that voice, that bright intoxicating presence, to acquiesce to the sense of urgency it gave him, wanted to do whatever the man required of him, but he _couldn't_. The dream always ended without him being able to follow or answer or do _anything_ , and it was so useless and stupid.

Grantaire stared at the bottom of his empty coffee cup for a minute before he realised it was gone, and sighed heavily as he pushed himself to his feet with some effort and wandered back to the small kitchen area to refill it. While he was up, he retrieved his phone from where it had been plugged in to charge and checked the time - a little after four, still far too early to call anyone. 

A few of his friends knew about the dreams, at least somewhat; he found it hard to talk about, so much of it he didn't even have words for, and it seemed so bizarre and inexplicable and stupid that he hesitated even to try. But Joly and Bossuet, at least, Eponine of course and Feuilly all knew a little about it. Bahorel knew rather less, and Grantaire thought he still assumed they were nightmares instead of...whatever the hell it was they were.

They were making his _life_ a nightmare, currently, but Grantaire couldn't even find it in himself to resent it, knew that if the dreams ever stopped he would be just as crushed to never see the terrifying, awe-inspiring, heartwrenching brilliance of that golden man again. To never hear that voice, or feel those burning eyes resting on him with a gaze like a living thing, charged and electric. To never feel that light the godlike man radiated blaze out and wrap around him, lifting his soul and drawing him in, drawing him forward even if he was unable to go. 

He'd never wish the dreams to stop entirely, just to maybe go back to something a little more manageable - or else to figure out how to do what was being asked of him, how to follow, how to _find_ the Apollo that called to him with such warmth and faith and even, he thought sometimes, affection. (That was probably wishful thinking.) Grantaire wanted to be able to meet and talk with him, wanted to follow him however and wherever; even if just in a dream, the idea thrilled him, stirred his soul, tugged his heart right out of his chest like nothing else ever had. To be able to just get _closer_ , to see and touch or even just look, he wanted that more than anything else. 

Grantaire found himself picking up his sketchbook before he even realised he'd thought about it, pausing and staring down at it in his hand a little warily, then shrugging and settling back into his seat on the couch, coffee at his elbow and a pencil in his hand. He pushed aside the lingering anxiety, the sense of failure and loss, and focused instead on the light, the brightness, the hungering need that filled him in the dream, the awe and piercing ache of wonder. The hopeless longing and...love, it was love, he didn't understand it and didn't like to admit it but something in him helplessly, fervently, desperately loved and adored that bright, ethereal figure. 

Not just the image, it wasn't merely the beauty he loved but the passion and fire and fierce, determined personality he could sense behind it. The faith and conviction in every line of him. The dream left him with more than just images - Grantaire could feel and sense much more than that, felt he somehow knew this man. Even if he didn't know details, it was like he could feel that bright soul touching his and _know_ it, and the enormity of his feelings in response to it beat with a physical ache in his chest, too big for him to contain. He let it take him over as he fell into memory, fresh and painful as it was, and began to draw, hardly aware of what he was doing. 

Several hours passed like that, and when he surfaced what was left of his coffee had gone cold beside him, and he had a series of sketches that were...well, not _quite_ exactly right, but were much closer than they'd ever been before. They were recognisably the man from his dream, at least to Grantaire; they readily recalled the memory image to him, and Grantaire let out a soft sigh as he stared down at them. It was part resignation and part bittersweet contentment, almost satisfaction, though an uneasy thread of fear trickled in. 

After all these years he'd finally managed to capture enough of the essence of the dream to sketch it with a marginal degree of success, and that meant that the dream really was getting sharper, clearer, more powerful. If that continued, would he have any life or self left, outside of it? Would he even care? Would his mind survive the constant torment of being pulled and urged toward something he could never reach, the yearning need for something he would never have? 

Grantaire bit his lip hard (no, probably the answer on all counts was no), and closed the sketchbook decisively. It hadn't happened yet, and maybe it wouldn't; there was no point in speculating or letting the fear take over, he had to focus on the here and now for as long as he still could. 

He checked his phone, found that it was nearing seven in the morning, and went to get a fresh cup of coffee before he did anything else. He stretched absently as he waited for the microwave to finish reheating it, working the kinks out of his muscles from where he'd sat tense and hunched over a sketchpad for far too long, curled up in the same position for hours. Despite that, he now felt more relaxed in the wake of the dream than he had for a very long time, and figured it probably had to do with the fact that he'd finally been able to _do_ something, slight and ineffectual though it was. 

At least the sketches were tangible, something he could look at and refine and remember in the real world. Something to prove, if only to himself, that his dream god existed, that it had happened, that it was real in some indefinable way. Not really real, but...not a figment of his imagination, either. Not just a fleeting, hazy recall of a dream. Something he could touch, even if it was only an image. 

He wished, would always wish that it was more, that it was really real, that somewhere in _this_ reality the beautiful Apollo existed and Grantaire could find him. But that was a foolish, romantic hope he'd let go of a long time ago. Dreams didn't work that way.

Retrieving his coffee, he took a long drink, savouring the flavour and the warmth, letting it ground him, and shook his head at the naivete of his younger self. Whether or not the dream had any connection to reality was a useless, pointless thing to wonder. It almost certainly didn't, but he didn't need it to. Really, he didn't. 

That it seemed he was now able to draw or paint it was encouraging enough, the release of tension and sense of accomplishment somewhat appeasing the usual feelings of disappointment and failure. 

If he could learn how to channel, how to manage this, how to survive it without his life falling apart, that was good enough for now.


	2. Enjolras

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Enjolras woke up sweating and cursing, throwing his covers aside violently as he sat up, swinging his feet over the side of the bed and then just sitting there for a moment, hunched over with his hands fisted in the sheet. He breathed, slowly, counting out the inhale and exhale, trying to slow it the way they'd taught him in yoga lessons. He wasn't terribly successful at it, but it did help a little bit._
> 
> _After a long few minutes he sighed heavily, a gust of air in a single exhale, shoulders relaxing as he frowned moodily at the carpet. He hated that dream, something about it seemed so...well, it got under his skin somehow, and he really couldn't afford to be losing sleep over this._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'd originally planned to write this mostly from Grantaire's pov, but [flutterings](http://archiveofourown.org/users/flutterings) requested a more balanced mirror pov, alternating between E and R, so this is the first Enjolras chapter now instead of later like I'd planned. I'll switch off between them until they actually meet, and then likely some chapters will be mixed.

* * *

 

Enjolras woke up sweating and cursing, throwing his covers aside violently as he sat up, swinging his feet over the side of the bed and then just sitting there for a moment, hunched over with his hands fisted in the sheet. He breathed, slowly, counting out the inhale and exhale, trying to slow it the way they'd taught him in yoga lessons. He wasn't terribly successful at it, but it did help a little bit.

After a long few minutes he sighed heavily, a gust of air in a single exhale, shoulders relaxing as he frowned moodily at the carpet. He hated that dream, something about it seemed so...well, it got under his skin somehow, and he really couldn't afford to be losing sleep over this.

There was a week and half, or less depending on the class, until finals, and he still had so much to do before then. He couldn't afford to waste time brooding over a fucking stupid nightmare - it was the same one he'd had for years now, and you'd think it would have lost it's impact by this time, but no.

It still left him torn and bleeding, screaming inside with the grief and despair of his dreamself, the lingering feeling of desperately needing to find and help the man who was crying out to him. The man who sounded so lost and broken, grieving and desperate. (Increasingly so over the years, he thought sometimes, but that seemed a little too fanciful to be true.) That man who needed Enjolras to find him, needed him to come back to...somewhere, somehow for some reason; in the dream he never knew exactly _why,_ what had happened, there was only the feelings, of knowing and of need.

But it was just a dream, and not about anyone he _actually_ knew. He’d never seen the man before, though granted he only ever caught glimpses of him, but it wasn’t an old acquaintance or friend or...anything like that, it wasn’t someone who really had somehow lost him. Just a random bizarre nightmare that had followed him around since the age of twelve or so.

It didn't come that often, fortunately, only two or three times a year at most, but this tonight was the third one inside of six months and that...that was unusual. At least he could be sure it wouldn't happen again until after finals -- having the dream twice within a month's time was unheard of, simply didn't happen, thank god.

  
He reached up tiredly to rub the back of his neck, wishing that he had someone nearby to massage his neck and shoulders, but like everything else, it would have to wait.

Looking at the clock, he sighed, dragging himself upright and shrugging into an old cardigan long since worn to softness, going to make himself some tea. He wasn't going to get back to sleep anyway, and he had class in just a few hours. Might as well get some work done in the meantime. In the kitchen he turned on the low lights under the cabinets rather than the overhead, their soft glow warmer and more intimate, cozy, soothing the sharp edges of his wrenched and ruffled mood.

As he went about methodically heating water and deciding what kind of tea he wanted, he pushed the lingering remnants of the nightmare down and far away, back into the shadows where it belonged, locking it down and refusing to think about it. It was only a random bizarre thing, it had no place in his conscious life.

He had too much to do, too much else to think about, to waste time and emotional energy on something that didn't actually mean anything at all. It was just a strange persistent nightmare, being lost in a storm with that voice crying out to him, begging and pleading in grief and despair, and his dreamself feeling the same agony of need to find and rescue whoever it was. In his dream he felt like he knew the man, felt that some vital other half of himself was waiting for him somewhere in that storm, lost and alone and needing him so badly, making him bleed with every cry, but no matter how hard Enjolras tried to fight the elements he could never get closer than to catch maybe a glimpse of him before they were torn apart again.

More often than not it was only the voice, and even the memory of it's pleading, grieving tones twisted him up inside, so he always refused to think about it when he was awake. He'd never even been in a relationship, certainly hadn't ever loved anyone that deeply or left and abandoned them the way his dreamself felt that he had, searching with a sick knot of fear and betrayal in his gut. He hadn't done that, didn't know anyone like that, there was no one out there waiting for him or missing him or falling apart without him. He'd be damned if he was going to let a crazy nightmare with no logical explanation wreak havoc on his well-ordered life.

It had nothing to do with him, it was only an insane glitch in his brain that inexplicably repeated now and then. There was no point dwelling on it, so he pushed it down as far as he could, ruthlessly suppressing the irrational emotional reaction to it and reminding himself that it was only a dream, a stupid nightmare, and there was no reason to think about it once he'd awoken, so he wouldn't. He couldn't allow it to affect his waking life, that way lay madness.

He found the tin of Kusmi green christmas tea that he hoarded for times like this, a green with vanilla, almond, orange and spices. His usual favourite was Fauchon's Paris Mon Amour, because it was hard to resist a blend that literally was named for how much he loved his city, a spicy, woody black Assam tea flavoured with hints of rose. But the christmas tea was more soothing, somehow, warming and full of heart, settling the jangling clash of nerves left over from being so rudely jarred awake by that dark dream.

So he saved it, made sure he had enough on hand to last him year round, and kept it for times just such as these, carefully measuring out the leaves and setting it to steep while he found the books and notes he needed for the essay he'd been working on. It was due in two days, along with a few other papers in varying stages of completion. This one was due before any of the others, however, so it would be best to get it out of the way.

Just the reassuring familiarity of pulling out his study materials and getting ready to go back to work on it was comforting, the process of organising his thoughts and reviewing his end-of-term game plan reminding him that he was in fact a sane, rational, responsible adult. He had work to do, and he was going to do it, make sure everything was done on time and he was as prepared as possible for the looming exams.

There was no place in his life for dream-inspired insanity. This was who he was, what he was good at, thinking and reasoning and writing, debating, laying out his points in a well-constructed, extensively thought out argument. He wasn't entirely sure what he would go on to use his degrees for, but he knew he wanted to get more involved in activism than he currently had time for, and write more than just speeches and essays, maybe even a book. Mostly though, he wanted to use what he'd learned to take action, to make things happen and make things better.

It was more that he had too many ideas than nothing concrete - he was still sorting through the options and deciding which things should be the highest priority, what he wanted to do _first_ more than what he wanted to do at all. He wanted to do so many things, and Combeferre would gently argue him out of some of them, pointing out things that were implausible or impossible or just too much effort for not enough results, but they had so far not settled on a specific plan for what to do after graduation; it went without saying that whatever it was, they would be doing it together, the two of them with Courfeyrac. They were his best friends, he didn't know what he would do without them. Anything seemed possible with the three of them working together, to be honest.

The square wooden table in his kitchen was already covered with papers and books and notebooks, since it was where he preferred to work most often - he had a desk, but he mainly used it for the desktop computer and for storage. When he was writing or doing homework, he liked being able to spread everything out over the larger surface of the table, having everything at his fingertips.

He shuffled things around, stacking other projects neatly and in order toward the back, out of the way, and arranging the things he needed right now within arms reach around the laptop. When the tea was done he poured himself a cup, adding just enough milk to make it cloudy and carrying both cup and teapot along with creamer over to the table, setting them in the cleared space he'd left for it.

With everything arranged just so, he sat down and took a sip of his tea, sighing a little as the familiar flavour relaxed the last of his tension, warmth seeping through him as he sat for a minute just enjoying it, the pleasure of the tea, chasing the hints of different notes in the flavour with every sip. Tea was one of his few weaknesses, an indulgence that Courfeyrac often teased him about, but he had few enough indulgences and as these things went, it was pretty harmless.

So he collected flavours and blends from his favourite brands, loose leaf by preference, and frequented tea salons when he wanted a change of scene for studying in. The meetings his group of friends held for their extracurricular activism were always in the Cafe Musain, and that was good, he liked it there too, but when he needed to be alone and focus only on what he was working on, more often than not if he wasn't going to be working here at home, he chose one of his favoured tea places.

He'd been rather almost haunting them lately, because sometimes he was too busy and focused on what he was studying to even bother making his own tea himself, and if he went there they would make it for him, perfect and exactly the way he liked it, leaving him free to focus entirely on studying and writing papers. Since all of them were extremely important with the end of term coming up, he'd been going out for that reason even more often than usual, and Courfeyrac had been teasing as always.

But he didn't honestly care about any of that, he had a process and it worked and he wasn't about to mess with it at such a crucial time, merely to keep his friends from teasing him about it. Besides, Jehan was nearly as fond of tea and tea salons as he was, and sometimes they would meet there and study together in comfortable silence.

Combeferre was less enamoured of tea in itself but he liked the atmosphere, so sometimes he would come too, either with Jehan or by himself. When Enjolras was particularly busy, they had their lunch dates there as well, talking through their respective studies and passing ideas back and forth, debating points here and there in the classes they shared. Combeferre always helped him clarify his ideas before he went back to work, so he didn't feel too guilty about taking an hour or so to meet with his friend every day.

Sometimes Courfeyrac came to their lunch dates as well, and they had lively three way debates, but usually those were saved for their meetings at the Musain, since they tended to be louder and sometimes disruptive. Courfeyrac had a flair for the dramatic which Enjolras appreciated, passion and intensity about social and philosophical ideas and the state of the world that enlivened their discussions in a heartening way, but they did tend to get rather louder when all three of them were together.

They also tended to get carried away and lose track of both time and topic, going off on tangents and pursuing them with enthusiasm, which was less conducive to getting his work done and focusing on what he was supposed to be studying.

So Enjolras mostly kept his tea habit to himself, enjoying it here at home or in the company of maybe one other person, and paid no mind to any teasing that it got him. It was a calming, soothing hobby and harmless even if it was historically an upper-class indulgence, so he went on collecting different blends and allotting them for different occasions, savouring the sweet relaxing comfort of it, something that slowed his world down, calmed and centered his mind when he was needing to focus instead of being driven to try and do everything all at once.

The christmas tea he was lingering over just now was saved for annoying emotional upsets, like talking to his mother or waking up from stupid nightmares. He sighed in pleased satisfaction as he drained the cup, then booted up the laptop before he poured himself another cup.

He added the dash of cream and then opened the file he needed, pulling his notes closer to hand as he went to work in earnest, allowing the sweet and spicy scent of tea in the air to lull his senses, the nightmare forgotten as it was buried deep, his reaction to it soothed away by the familiar habits.

Since he had a few more waking hours than he'd planned on now, maybe he could get the rest of this paper knocked out, at least in draft form, before he had to get ready for class.

 


End file.
